


Handle With Care

by Feynite



Series: Canon-ish Solavellan [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fade Sex, Intimacy, Oral Sex, PWP, Porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 15:29:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4671788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feynite/pseuds/Feynite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solas loves to be touched, and, truth be known, she loves to touch him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Handle With Care

 

Solas, she finds, rarely initiates touch.

But he loves it.

She gets her first inkling of this when she steals a kiss in the Fade, and he reels her back for another, and then one more, dizzying and sensual.

That is the first time, but it proves to be something of a pattern. She touches his wrist; he takes her hand. She grasps his sleeve; he puts his arms around her. She brushes a kiss to his cheek; he takes her face between his hands and returns it to her brow.

There is something holding him back, she knows, some tether that she can’t really see and that he seems incapable of explaining, but it’s fragile. It only takes a touch to strain it; she is curious to see how far it could go before it snaps.

Solas loves to be touched, and, truth be known, she loves to touch him.

She begins her campaign in earnest after a particularly frigid hike through Emprise du Lion; luring him to her chamber with the promises of a rare magical history tome that one of Dorian’s contacts managed to turn up. It’s not an idle promise. The tome is heavy and ancient and they spend two hours sincerely pouring over it – she doesn’t know too much about magic, but it’s an interesting subject in and of itself. And the history is something anyone can appreciate.

She makes certain there are a few sweet cakes laid out on the desk, and though Solas doesn’t mention them, they are plucked up by pale fingers in between turns of a page, and disappear in short order.

Eventually, she rises under the pretense of removing the empty plate, and when she returns, she settles over his shoulder instead of retaking her seat. It’s simple enough to disguise the move by pointing to a passage on the tome in front of him, and asking for some clarification. He dives into an explanation readily, and only glances up, briefly, when her hand comes back and rests on his shoulder instead of his seat.

She starts to move the hand as she asks another question. Gentle, idle strokes. He’s relaxed; this level of contact isn’t unusual for them. She dips her thumb under the top of his collar and rubs slow circles at the back of his neck, listening to the steady cadence of his voice as he explains the cultural impact on the evolution of a particular magical form.

It’s only once she gets the other hand involved that he pauses.

“What are you doing?” he asks, glancing back at her again.

She raises an eyebrow at him.

“You’ve never had a shoulder rub?” she asks, and works her thumbs against him.

Any response he might have made is cut off by a soft groan, and she realizes that for all that he _is_ relaxed, his back is a mess of knots. It isn’t particularly a surprise – the Breach is enough to keep them all tensed and ready at a moment’s notice – but it can’t possibly be comfortable. She wonders how many hours he’s spent hunched for too long over that table of his, or painting some bare section of the tower’s walls, or working the motions for some particularly complex spell, too focused on his task to remember his body.

She tuts in distaste, and any thought of seduction goes flying out of the window.

“This is terrible. Come on, up,” she commands, tugging at his sweater until he rises from his seat.

“I apologize if I-”

“Lay down on the bed,” she instructs.

His eyebrows fly up, his mouth rounding into a soft ‘o’, and she’ll have to remember that look later. But for now, she ignores it, dragging him by the arm while he still seems to have lost track of his silver tongue. He only finds it again once she’s pushed his – surprisingly pliant – form face-down onto her duvet.

“This is uncommonly forward of you,” he notes.

“It really isn’t, but we can discuss that later,” she replies, and sets about tugging his sweater off.

He kisses her neck, and she smiles, but she bats him away and worms around until she’s straddling his back.

“What exactly are-”

“Shh. Just let me.”

She starts working the muscles there. He makes a little sound, too pained for her liking, and she pauses to retrieve a bottle of lotion from the bedside table. Some awful scented stuff from Orlais, one of those gifts with double meanings that had Josephine clucking in distaste and offering to burn it, while Leliana left the room to go arrange for something unpleasant to happen to someone, somewhere.

She is still too Dalish to waste even distasteful gifts, however.

Reputedly, the lotion warms at a touch, and that seems to be the case as she rubs it into the pale skin of Solas’ back. She counts the knots as she finds them, working them over until the candles are burning low, and he is pliant and all but _purring_ under her hands. She keeps going, even as her arms tire, moving on from his back to his hips, his arms, trailing fingers over his scalp and the curve of his jaw and massaging the muscles at the base of his skull.

When at last there are only the barest flickers of light left, she sighs in satisfaction, and leans back.

Solas turns to regard her.

His expression is decidedly glazed.

She chuckles at him. Such care had not been uncommon in her clan; hunters and warriors and scouts all have to keep their muscles in good condition, and there is nothing quite like touch to strengthen social bonds. Humans are different about it, she’s found; the Chargers aren’t, but that seems to be Bull’s influence and the pragmatism of mercenaries. Cullen’s soldiers don’t exchange such favours, or at least don't talk about it if they do, and he’d balked when she’d suggested it, as if she’d brought up something untoward. It didn’t seem likely that poor Solas, first in a remote village and then out in wilderness and ruins, had been indulged with it very often.

When he finally brings himself to move, it is slow, as if he’s dragging himself through syrup.

“I should return the favour,” he murmurs.

“You should sleep,” she corrects, and sits up again to nudge him towards the pillows and under the blankets, before he can get any bright ideas about finding his shirt or returning to his own quarters. People will gossip in the morning. She doesn’t care. She is beholden to no authority regarding her bedroom activities, and if anyone wants to make snide comments about how Heralds of Andraste should remain ‘pure’ then she’ll gladly give them a kiss from her mark; otherwise known as a punch to the nose.

Once again, Solas puts up very little fight before he drops his head onto the pillow, and is utterly gone.

She watches him sleep for a moment with something that can only be described as perfect satisfaction. It may not have been precisely what she’d _intended_ when she’d lured him to her bedchamber with a book and some vague thoughts of seduction, but she’s still going to count it as a victorious outcome.

Rising, she strips down and slips into her own nightclothes, and puts out the lights, and climbs into the vast expanse of the bed alongside him.

She drifts slowly into sleep, aware first of a brief feeling of mental disorientation, and then of being pounced upon.

She barely has time to register _arms_ and _lips_ and _oh, hello_ and that, yes, this is Solas – or a spirit doing a very good approximation, but probably not, given who’s sleeping right next to her – before she is being pinned against something soft and there is a tongue pressing into her mouth.

The kisses are hungry at first but slow, gradually, into long strokes and lingering breaths. His hands roam, stroking her sides, her hips, sliding up the thin fabric she’s wearing to explore her breasts, and down to the swell of her ass. Her own touches trail across his bare back.

She smiles against his lips, and when he finally gives her room enough to move, kisses one corner of his jaw.

“I thought it was a bad idea to do this sort of thing in the Fade?” she asks.

“It is,” he tells her.

“Are we living dangerously, then, ma sa’lath?” she wonders, and he groans and curses and begins pressing hot kisses to the side of her neck.

It sends a bolt of warmth right through her and straight down, and she finds a corner of one of his ears and runs her teeth along it, delighted and _ridiculously_ aroused.

“You’re going to be the death of me,” he accuses.

“Not if you do me in first,” she replies.

It’s the wrong thing to say; it stops him stone cold.

He goes utterly still against her, lips fixed at her collarbone, hands on her hips. She sends him a questioning glance. Wonders if there is some buried lover in his past, or if not, what it is that keeps stalling him, keeps stalling _this._

“Solas?” she asks.

He retreats, slightly; takes her hands in his and presses a kiss to the back of one. His eyes, when he looks at her, are strange.

“That will not happen,” he tells her.

She offers him a tentative smile.

“Of course not. You wouldn’t really kill me any more than I would you,” she assures him, but that doesn’t seem to help. For one second he looks so very, very far away, and it _aches_. She reaches for him, cradles his face between her fingers.

“Please tell me,” she begs. “What is it? What can I do?”

“Live forever,” he blurts.

She looks at him, passion cooling into concern. His eyes are so bright, and so full of shadows. It's such a foolish thing to ask, but, lovers are supposed to be foolish, aren't they?

“Alright,” she says.

He laughs at her.

“Just like that?” he asks, but some of his tragic severity is fading. She presses a kiss to the freckles on his nose, curls her fingers behind his ears.

“Of course! I am the great Inquisitor! Descended of ancient elves, Chosen by Andraste herself, rival of the would-be god Corypheus, and saviour of all Thedas, if you believe what everyone says,” she informs him. “And if my beloved asks me to live forever, who am I to refuse him? I would grant him whatever his heart desires.”

Solas laughs again, mirth and pain, still, but it’s better than before.

“And how would you go about fulfilling such a ridiculous promise?” he asks.

“Simple,” she tells him. “I just won’t die.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

He stares at her with breathtaking affection.

“My heart tells such sweet lies,” he says.

She takes his chin between her thumb and forefinger, and makes him look at her straight on.

“Prove that I’m lying,” she dares him, trying for teasing, for lightness, attempting to pull this game of theirs out of the perilous space it feels like it’s in.

A tear slips down his cheek; it shocks her so badly she lets go of him, ready to apologize, to assure him that all is well and she meant no harm. He catches her before she can, and presses his lips to hers, warm and bittersweet and she doesn’t know _why._

She can’t make him tell her.

So she puts her arms around him again, leans into his warmth and traces his lips with hers, kisses the salt from his cheek and then from his eyelashes, first one set, then the other.

They drift, then, into something unhurried and sensual. Comforting. He trails touches down her stomach, across her thighs. She puts her lips to the backs of his knuckles, the curve of his ribs, the jut of his hip. He is warm and easy and it seems so simple when she finally dips his leggings low and takes him into her hand, and he presses forward and lets out a sigh.

“Alright?” she asks him.

His eyes flit to hers.

“I want you so badly,” he admits.

She offers him a smile.

“Then _have_ me already!”

The tether snaps, and to her astonishment he literally _sweeps_ her up, burying his face against her and breathing her in. He dives down, hot mouth against her collarbone, her breasts, her navel, pushing away fabric until his tongue sweeps lower and lower and she gasps. He presses his assault until she’s trembling, hands at his shoulders as licks and kisses and works his clever fingers into her, heat gathering in a molten pool at the bottom of her belly.

“Solas,” she warns.

He keeps going.

She presses his shoulder, insistently, and finally he lets up.

“I want you too,” she tells him, panting, and for a second he just _looks_ at her as if he is utterly lost.

She seizes the opening and squirms free, even though her every urge is insisting that, no, they really need to stay let him keep doing what he was just doing; but there is a ferocity in her as well, and so she pushes him onto his back, pins his wrists so she can kiss the taste of herself from him, then pins his hips so she can lick him from base to tip.

He breathes raggedly until she starts to swallow him down, and then he gasps.

“Vhenan.”

She hums. She licks and sucks and holds him in place as he throbs and clutches at her, and when _she_ finally lets up, she raises her eyes to the sight of him; flushed and blown apart and beautiful.

Carefully, she climbs up him, and positions herself.

“May I?” she asks.

He gives her a look of annoyance and huffs. It starts a laugh out of her.

“I don’t want you to think you can’t back out,” she reasons, seriously. “You can, if you want to.”

His eyes clear a little, then, the haze of lust giving way to something sharper, and he presses a hand to her hip and arches up to kiss to the underside of her jaw.

“Ma vhenan,” he whispers, followed by a string of elvish she doesn’t know, and slides into her, teases his fingers against her as she adjusts.

For a moment, they simply remain like that.

Then she moves, and it’s like a shock to them both.

She rocks gently, slides unhurriedly, savouring it. He keeps up the unfamiliar elvish; only sporadic terms are recognizable, but the general tone of it is universal. Sparks dance behind her eyelids.

And also around them.

She glances at them, momentarily concerned; but Solas is unbothered, and the Fade seems mostly quiet, otherwise.

That’s the most concern she can spare for it, anyway, before she finds herself pressing even more firmly against him, taking all of him until they’re sinking utterly into one another. She is on the very edge, and he is bucking against her and…

She wakes.

It’s like a bucket of cold water has just been dumped over her head.

She stares, bewildered, at her bedposts. The sheets are twisted between them. A glance towards Solas reveals him still asleep.

A persistent knocking at the door solves the mystery of what woke her.

She is sorely tempted to scream.

Instead she kicks her way out of bed, grabs her robe, and heads down to her chamber door and _wrenches_ it open.

One of the scouts is standing outside it.

“Inquisitor! The Seeker wanted to me to report to you on-”

“Is the hold on fire?” she asks.

The scout blinks at her.

“Er, no?”

“Has anyone died?”

With an uncomfortable glance at her robe, the scout’s eyes widen, minutely, and he shakes his head.

“Did Corypheus decide to show up with an army again?”

“It’s, er, not urgent,” the man wisely decides.

“Give it to Cullen,” she instructs.

The scout flees.

She slams the door in his wake and lets out a stream of invectives that would make Sera blush.

Covering her face with one hand, she trudges back up the stairs, and risks a glance towards Solas.

She is greeted with a vision of the most disgruntled-looking elf she’s ever seen in her life, wide awake and scowling.

“I am going to kill Cassandra,” she tells him. “It’s a shame. We’ll all mourn her, I’m sure.”

Her heart sinks in profound disappointment and frustration. She’s still aroused, half on fire, and a little voice in the back of her mind is absolutely _convinced_ that he’s about to say it’s a good thing this happened, anyway, that they shouldn’t have taken it so far, that the Fade clouded his judgement and they need to be more cautious and so on and so forth.

He makes the most primal sound she’s ever heard from him, and gets out of the bed only so he can drag her back into it.

“We’re not in the Fade anymore,” she reminds him, and then gasps as presses his fingers into her.

“I am aware,” he promises.

It’s hastier, this time – the sensuality giving way to their shared impatience as clothing is roughly stripped off, both of them desperate to get back to where they had been. She bites his lip and he makes that delightful sound again, so close now that it shudders right through both of them.

He plunges back into her with a bit _too_ much haste, however, and she gasps and eases back and his expression crashes into horrified guilt.

“Vhenan-”

“It’s alright, just a little too quick, all that lovely foreplay was in a dream,” she reminds him.

But he retreats entirely, pulls back and dips his head between her thighs.

“You don’t have to-” she begins, but cuts off as he all but inhales her flesh, tongue dragging between her folds, lips hot against her skin.

This time he refuses to let up until she comes, crashing, twisting the sheets between her hands and gasping his name.

He nuzzles her hip, after, kisses his way up her body as she brushes the back of his head, dazed by the rush of it. She cups his cheek with her marked hand and he kisses her palm, lips wet.

She twists towards him, wrapping her legs around him, and he slides in sweetly.

She can’t get him to pick up the pace again, though, and with the little aftershocks of her orgasm still rippling through her, she doesn’t quite have the coherence to try and redirect their rhythm herself. So it’s slow and easy once more as he drags his way in and out of her, eyes locked onto her face.

Reaching up, she runs her thumb over the dip in his chin.

“Ma sa’lath, hurry up,” she requests, with a smile. “We don’t have _all_ day.”

“I would take all day,” he promises her. “I would take that and more. I would take years.”

She sighs, and feels herself building up again. With a spark of mischief she clenches around him, tight as she can, and draws an exquisite moan from him. She arches, grips at his backside, presses him down with each thrust until he begins to fray at the edges.

He comes, and then tips her over again in return.

They kiss their way through the aftershocks, until they are sprawled alongside one another. She leans her head against his chest, traces an idle finger across it until he catches her hand and threads their fingers together. Then she tilts her face to look up at him.

“So. Cakes, books, massages, and the Fade,” she muses. “I think I’ve got your number now.”

He huffs at her.

“Then I fell into your trap?” he asks. “This was all a ploy to win me into your bed?”

His tone is teasing, but there’s a note of genuine wariness that she dislikes. Propping herself on her elbows, she leans over him, and kisses the bridge of his nose.

“Ar lath ma. You are my one,” she kisses one cheek, “my only,” she kisses the other, “love,” she captures his lips.

He closes his eyes and kisses her back so sweetly that she melts.

It takes them the better part of the morning to get out of bed, then. But the day and duty must inevitably catch up with them. She leaves him - still gloriously dishevelled - with his newly acquired tome, planting one last kiss at his temple before she turns to the leave the room.

When she glances back at him, though, he is staring out of her windows. There are shadows in his eyes again.

“Solas,” she calls.

He looks towards her.

“Whatever it is, you can tell me,” she assures him.

He regards her in silence, and does not ask what she means.

After a long, fragile moment, he inclines his head towards her. It is a simple acknowledgement, but his mouth twists downwards. He says nothing. He offers no more, for now.

She leaves with a fluttering hope in her heart, and a strange sense of dread clipping at her heels.


End file.
